April planting

 Today I bought the following from Home Depot and planted them in the garden:

• 2 little blueberry plants
• 2 6-packs of strawberries
• Sweet mint
• Peppermint
• Husky Red Cherry Tomato
• Sweet 100 Cherry Tomato
• Japanese Eggplant
• Japanese Cucumber
• Giant Marconi Pepper
• Sweet Yellow Pepper

Spring Flowers

From Home Depot:

• Ice plant (lampranthus)
• Ranunculus (Ruby's "rose")
• Marigold
• Lamium
• Viola
• African daisy
• Pansy
• 100 Onions starts
• 3 heads of planting garlic
• Some pea pods we saved from last year

From Star Nursery:

• Gerbera daisy
• Lobelia
• Alyssum
• Osteospermum
• Lemon slice
• Petunia
• Early girl (They gave us 2 free starts. I put one in the front yard and one in a container so we can take it in at night.)
• Sweet Italian Basil
• Artichoke

Grandma gave us some Cone flowers that we scattered around too.

Grandpa gave us some daffodils

We also bought a female pistachio tree but I forgot to plant it.

Goodbye shade

We had the Ash tree cut down on February 12, 2021.

They also transplanted the pecan to where the fig was. The tree bag idea was a failure. They just dug it out of the ground with a shovel. It didn't even look like they were careful of the roots.

Pruned the Apricot Tree

I made the time to prune the apricot tree today.

I cut a little more than I have in the past and tried to open it up a bit so the branches weren't as crowded and running into each other. And I also used the saw on some of the larger ones growing branches that were out of reach.

Some of the branches that looked dead. Should I be worried about that?

And I found a weird growth. I really hope the tree isn't on its way out because we sure do love the fruit!

 

Another Tree Consult

 We had the same tree professional come out again. This time he said the ash tree is probably not going to recover.

He suggested planting a mulberry to replace it.

He noticed some borer damage on the almonds and suggested spraying with dormant oil.

He had no idea why one of our pistachio trees died soon after he worked on it the first time.

By the way, a few days ago I planted some garlic in the front yard.

Oregeno and Thyme

We finished processing the herbs that have been drying about our dining room table from November 7.

We got a jar and a half of Thyme:

And decided to finish crushing the oregano as needed:

Apricot Harvest 2020

We harvested our apricots in May and June. I wanted to keep a record of our yield so I can compare to future years. In addition to eating lots of fresh apricots we preserved:

• 24 dehydrator trays of fruit leather
• 3 cookie sheets of flash frozen fruit
• 27 cups of blended fruit, frozen

Used fertilizer spikes on the trees

We bought Jobe's Organics Fruit & Nut tree spikes and I put three around each of the fruit and nut trees.

It's getting hot and the sunflowers look like they're thirsty. There are only one or two that are flowering.

We harvested a nice little bagful of peas and started trimming back the grape vines.

Can we save the ash tree?

We had a professional come and look at our trees.

He said it might be possible to save the ash tree and injected fertilizer.

He suggested transplanting the pecan to where the fig died in the fall.

They also added 3 extra emitters to all our fruit and nut trees so they get watered at the canopy instead of just at the base of the tree.

He said to make sure the trees weren't getting watered every day, even in the heat of the summer. And to do one long deep water in June, July and August.

Last Spring Planting

One of the sweet potatoes we got at Home Depot finally started to sprout. So today I split it in two and planted them in the front yard. We haven't had any luck with anything there, so maybe that was a bad idea.

I also planted seeds of the following in the garden:

• Blue bush beans
• The last few garden beans
• The last few melon seeds
• Winter squash
• Armenian cucumber
• Dark star zucchini
• Summer crookneck squash

And in the front yard by the volunteer pansy/violets I planted some Blue flax and Showy Desert Penstemon seeds. Maybe this year they'll actually come up?

None of the tomato and pepper plants look like they're doing very well. Even though it rained last night. I switched the watering from once every four days to once every three. And it's nowhere near the heat of the summer yet.

Planted the starts

• We weren't super consistent with the hardening off, but we did get the starts outside for several hours each day.
• The peas are getting close to needing to be trellised somehow
• There are carrots and spinach and onions starting to come up
• Lots of weeding to be done, particularly in the bed with lots of sunflowers last year
• I love all the volunteer greenery and feeding weeds to the chickens!

Darren Pearce starts

Early Girl Hybrid - Indeterminate - 52 days
Phoenix Hybrid - Determinate - 72 days
2 Sweet banana peppers - 72 days
Yellow pear tomatoes - Indeterminate - 78 days
Orange sun peppers - 80 days
Italian basil

We are going to harden them off for a week before we plant.

Spring planting

From Home Depot:

• Cherry tomato
• Jalapeno hot pepper
• Sweet basil
• Green bell pepper (2)
• Fresh bites orange pepper
• Better bush tomato
• Onion set
• There were a 100 of these and I planted them all over
• Sweet potato
• Supposedly the ones in the super market are treated so they don't sprout. We put these two by a window to see if they'll start sprouting in the next two weeks.
• Raspberry
• I'm not sure if they grow in our climate, but we decided to try it.
• Grape (Tami G) Hybrid tomato
• This was a big plant in a planter for almost $20. I'm not sure if it was supposed to stay in the planter but I decided to try transplanting it.

A lady there said that it gets too hot here for the big slicing tomatoes to grow well and only the smaller cherry or grape varieties work well.

I also planted some spinach and kale and probably a few other things.

The peas I planted a while ago have started to sprout.

I don't feel like there were a whole ton of blossoms on the apricot tree so I'm a bit worried we might not get a big crop this year.

But the little apricot sapling from the seed I planted made it through the winter!

Planted

The community garden is planning to plant on Monday so today we planted two half rows of peas and onions and one half row of lettuce. The highs are supposed to be in the 50's next week.

Planted apricot seeds

Back when the apricots were ripe I saved some of the largest pits and extracted the seeds. And today I put them in the ground in the hopes they'll grow in the spring.

Fertilized the trees

I put the Fruit and Nut Tree fertilizer around most of our trees today. Even though I think it was probably a bit late in the season to do so. If I put a ton of compost/mulch around each tree would that mean I didn't need to use chemical fertilizers?

Don't pick the green onions

The onions were the only thing still left in the ground so I picked them all and covered the raised beds with shredded leaves for the winter. But I should have just left them there because I read they can survive fine in the ground whereas they'll go bad in the fridge.

The purslane is flowering

We didn't weed all the purslane because it's edible. Hopefully we don't regret it...

Pro tip: Water more when it's hotter

When it starts getting really hot (e.g. summer weather), I need to water the grass more. I'm not sure why I always forget to do that.

Apricots

Apricot Season has arrived! First pick fell May 30, 2016 in the wind.

Saturday June 4, 2016- first attempt at canning apricots (6 pints). I tried to skip the ascorbic acid/ lemon bath soak while preparing an entire batch and I put them straight in the juice (50% diluted apple juice) for holding. They got too mushy and by the end of canning were almost a puree. A good use for them is to mix into plain yogurt as flavoring. Next year tip: cut all apricots first and hold in ascorbic acid bath. Start heating canner/bottles and juice about 1/2 or 3/4 way through cutting.

We have dried 2 batches (about 1 gallon bag) in the sun using a mesh enclosed food dryer with plastic trays. 100+ degree weather (Fahrenheit); took 5 days for the first batch, second batch is still on.

We've done multiple batches of fruit leather in indoor dehydrator. 16+ trays at present.

One dryer full (gallon bag) of dried apricots using indoor dehydrator.

Made freezer jam today. Had less sugar pectin (1/2 box) that needed using so I used that with 1/8 cup sugar mixing straight into purred apricots (4 cups) mixed with 2-4 tablespoons lemon juice (just dumped, didn't measure) and heated slightly on the stove. I pureed the apricots hoping it would set more evenly and because they were in rough shape with bird pecks (cut out of course), bruising from the wind pushing them into the branches, and a few overripe from late picking. Mixed in 4 tablespoons + 1.5-2 teaspoons black chia seeds off the heat to help thicken. Used immersion blender to chip seeds for improved texture. So far it is like a thick sauce, but here's to hoping chilling will help it set and the small amount of pectin will contribute a bit of texture. Our 3 year old loves the taste!